For Young Female Coders, Internship Interviews Can Be Toxic | WIRED

Men working in the technology industry, especially those in leadership roles, need to read articles like this that share the experience that women in technology have. This article is even more troubling as it is focused on internships!

More than half of the respondents said they either had a negative experience while applying for engineering internships or knew another woman who had a negative experience, such as being subjected to gender-biased interview questions and inappropriate remarks, or observing a noticeable lack of diversity when they interacted with company representatives during the interview process.

Although the survey did not explicitly ask about sexual harassment and discrimination, respondents raised both issues in written responses at the end of the survey. They described instances where a male interviewer flirted with them during the interview, sent an unsolicited photo of himself, asked if they had a significant other, or made sexual remarks in their presence. The respondents also reported feeling dismissed or demeaned because of their gender. One respondent was asked why she would want to go into tech as a woman; in another instance, a male interviewer laughed when the candidate said she saw herself becoming a software engineer in five years.

The inappropriate behavior they describe is alarming considering that the average age of the respondents was 19 and, for the most part, they’re describing interactions with grown men who have some control over their access to opportunity.

The scale of this problem is big, but it cannot be ignored.